Witness the Fall
by Waifine
Summary: Crowley never talked about his time as an angel. Aziraphale never asked. But when Hell sends Crowley a package containing his most painful memories, it is Aziraphale who is plunged into the nightmare history of when his beloved friend, the angel who had once been Crowley, was hurled from the Heavens into the bowels of Hell.
1. It's Just a J

**Chapter One**

**It's Just a J**

Aziraphale knew it was a trap almost the moment he accepted the packaged from the smiling middle aged Delivery Man, who gave no indication of recognizing Aziraphale from the tail-end of the Armageddidn't, when he relieved this particular angel and the demon Crowley of the articles previously belonging to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, now deceased. Or Death.

The man simply handed Aziraphale the package, accepted his signature, and was on his way.

Aziraphale, formerly Principality and Guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden, now stood alone Crowley's flat, holding the unwelcome object at arm's length. It was a long, thin package, with Crowley's demonic name, constructed of many twisting curls and with the slight whiff of burning, emblazoned on the wrapping paper.

Crowley was out at the moment, and Aziraphale had stopped by to take advantage of his absence to give the plants some much needed love. The poor dears. Crowley's relationship to his Garden, or the lack there of, and what it meant exactly, was a subject that Aziraphale had yet to broach with the demon, though he had every intention of doing so sooner than later.

It had been about a month since the Armageddidn't. As far as Aziraphale was aware, this was the first contact Hell had made with Crowley since that time, and the first parcel that Crowley had received from Downstairs since the Baby in a Basket over eleven years ago.

Tentatively, Aziraphale walked through the foyer, past the statue of Good and Evil Wrestling, which he absolutely did not give a second glance to, twice, then set the package down on Crowley's desk and settled himself in Crowley's throne. It was a remarkably well-presented package, considering the state of affairs as Aziraphale had seen them in Hell. It was wrapped in a black satin paper with an alluring sheen. Apart from the place where Crowley's name had been cut into the packaging with a red glow that was smoking even now, it looked quite official.

The demonic name curled into what vaguely looked like the letter J.

"_What does the J stand for?"_ Aziraphale had once asked, surrounded by Nazis.

"_It's just a J,"_ Crowley had muttered back. Perhaps. Perhaps not. The name on the package sputtered and a quiet crack sounded as an ember flew from it and skipped harmlessly across the marble tabletop. Aziraphale had never asked again. It didn't really seem important. He had always vaguely assumed that Crowley somehow botched his Human Name Registration form, and the J stood for something embarrassing. Now when he looked at the red, blistering mark before him though… Aziraphale could not help wondering if it was another link in the invisible chain over which Crowley always labored. Like his garden. Demons weren't supposed to understand the concept of penance. And yet…

"_I won't be forgiven. Not ever. Unforgivable, that's what I am."_ It had been resentment in Anthony J. Crowley's voice that day at the bandstand. Resentment… and total acceptance.

Aziraphale tried to shake himself free of the feelings that seeing Crowley's demonic name washed over him. The low hum of panic it brought with it. He turned his attention to the letter. Because there _was_ a letter. Aziraphale eyed the black envelope, somehow shades blacker than the wrapping. Obsidian black.

It was a trap. He knew it as surely as he knew his own name, angelic and earthly. He would protect Crowley from the trap if he could. And yet, how could he? After all… opening another person's mail seemed like a real breech of privacy. Aziraphale fussed in Crowley's throne, pulling on his sleeves. _What to do,_ he thought.

"_We're on our side."_

Crowley's voice echoed in his head. Aziraphale smiled a little, despite himself.

"Hang it all," he finally muttered. If this was a trap, if this was more holy water or some other infernal scheme, then better that Aziraphale take it. Better that he take the brunt of it and apologize to Crowley for invading his privacy afterwards. Before he could think better or worse of it, Aziraphale took hold of the envelope and ripped it open. Carefully, he removed the black paper inside. Embossed in gold lettering, he read the words:

_A gift to the demon Crowley, to remind him that he always has a home._

Something about the words made the hairs on the back of Aziraphale's neck stand on end. It wasn't just the wording, unnerving as that was. No… it was the presentation. So clean while being so rich. So crisp. This wasn't Hell's style. It was Crowley's. They were intentionally playing up to Crowley's aesthetic. Did they really think that would lull him into a false sense of security? Crowley? The demon who had been circling and watching and keeping an eye out for Aziraphale from the moment of their Arrangement a thousand years ago?

Aziraphale stared at the word _Home._ Perhaps it might have done.

He tossed the letter aside with careful carelessly. It didn't matter. Hell may have put on this performance for Crowley, but they had gotten Aziraphale for an audience. And they had misjudged the venue. With the deft hands of a bookseller, Aziraphale tore the wrapping paper along the creases and laid the parcel bare in Crowley's flat.

A thin black box. _Nothing for it,_ Aziraphale swallowed. He opened it. Aziraphale was almost blinded. Light filled the room. It seemed to devour every dark corner. The Mona Lisa seemed to smile more beautifully at the glow. The stone eagle seemed to flap its wings. After so long staring at the black of the letter and the dark sheens of the wrapping paper, Aziraphale had not been prepared. There, on a black velvet cushion, lay a single white feather.

An angel's feather.

It warmed Aziraphale from the chill he had not realized had seeped through him. Why had Hell sent Crowley…

His mind raced… Would the warmth that he now felt as an angel actually burn Crowley as a demon? No, that wasn't it. Crowley had seen Aziraphale's wings, after all. Many times. And that had done no damage. Aziraphale leaned forward. It was long and beautiful. Yet the aura seeping through it… It belonged to no angel Aziraphale knew. And yet… Curious thing… it felt familiar. More familiar to him than his own self. It called to him. After the terrible sight of Crowley's demonic name, the letter J that was not just a J… this was like a balm on Aziraphale's soul.

"Who… are you…" he whispered. He reached out and gently, oh so gently, he touched the little tuft of Heaven here on earth.

Aziraphale's body exploded in fire and brimstone. His vision went white. The feather… the memories it carried, scored themselves onto him and flooded his senses. Aziraphale screamed.


	2. Aid to Raphael

**Chapter Two**

**Aid to Raphael**

Aziraphale stumbled. He blinked. He gasped. His vision, white hot from pain, did not so much clear as it… reformed. White walls. White marble floors. White clouds… Heaven. _I'm in Heaven. _

The realization hit him with it a wave of panic. How could he be here? What had that feather been? A transport? Had Heaven intended to lure Crowley here and do away with him as they had been unable to do away with Aziraphale? The angel spun around, aether wafting around his feet.

No. Something was different. Where…. Where was the stainless steel, the glass, the tops of humanity's greatest buildings scraping the lowermost clouds? This Heaven… it was all clouds and… Aziraphale looked up at the dark and churning expanse above. Not black. But filled with so many colors beyond comprehension. Colors that Humanity would never see. That would die out and mature over the millennia, long before the first telescope.

Aziraphale felt tears welling at the corners of his eyes and spilling down his cheeks. What had come over him? He inhaled deeply. The air smelled like the head of a newborn baby. It brushed his cheeks like the first wisps of its hair. This was the Universe new. He could almost feel its flickering heartbeat, strong and vibrant and just born.

Stars. Aziraphale was witnessing the birth of stars. This was the past. The Heaven of the Beginning. He watched in awe and wonder as constellations blinked into shape, as nebulas churned, as the milky way pooled across the expanse as though it was mother's milk seeping through so much life, feeding the galaxies. It was all so beautiful. The stars had already been made when Aziraphale was born. He was a Principality, old as the beginning of the Earth. Not as old as the beginning of the Heavens.

As Aziraphale gazed, a single star detached from the sky. He watched as it crescented across the sky, almost sauntering vaguely downward. He smiled. _The first falling star…_

It wasn't a star.

At the last moment the angel descending from the stratosphere spread his wings, caught himself on an updraft of that baby's breath of Life, and with infinite grace sunk down to one kneel on the cloud before him. Aziraphale opened his mouth to call out. _Where are we? Who are you? What is happening?_

"There you are!"

The voice cut through the stillness like an unwelcome guest at the moment the child has just been lulled to sleep. A river of ice felt as though it slipped through the back of Aziraphale's shirt at that all too familiar voice behind him. He spun around.

There stood Gabriel. His eyes were not yet violet, but he was just as broad shouldered. Just as imposing. Perhaps… a little newer. Angels could not age. But there was a relaxed nature to Gabriel's stance that would ossify in the centuries to come. And he was staring directly at Aziraphale.

What could he say? Gabriel was walking toward him. And he was… smiling? Before Aziraphale could think of a single word, Gabriel walked _right through him._ Aziraphale gasped, his very being shifting at the impact, then reforming. Had he discorporate again? But that wouldn't keep Gabriel from seeing him. It was as if Aziraphale wasn't here at all. He turned to follow the direction in which Gabriel was walking.

Just in time to see the angel he was speaking to raise his head.

No sound came from Aziraphale. Not a breath. It was the absence of breath that filled him. He knew this angel.

His hair was long and cascaded in waves down his shoulders. It was not the bright and glaring red that Aziraphale was so accustomed to. No. It was strawberry red. The color of maids in Scottish ballads. Or heated gold. The red of the gentlest sunset. _Perhaps that was where the sunset got its color,_ Aziraphale now realized.

And from head to toe the angel was dusted in starlight.

"Gabriel," the angel said, brushing back his hair and scattering shards of light all around them. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Ah!" Gabriel raised his hands, "Careful with that! You're going to drop a new dwarf star right on top of us if you're not careful!"

The angel laughed, that same warm laugh that Aziraphale knew so well. How could he have changed so much and not at all?

"I'm serious," Gabriel chided as they began to walk in stride, together. The sight was uncanny to Aziraphale. "After all the organization and planning that I've put into the designs, the last thing we need is–"

"Spontaneity?" The angel smirked that old familiar smirk. Though Aziraphale supposed that, at this point, it was still new. A freshly minted smirk. Hesitantly, realizing now that he was in no danger of being sighted, Aziraphale fell into step beside Gabriel and the other angel.

"Lighten up," the angel clapped Gabriel on the back with such familiarity it made Aziraphale gasp. Not in 6,000 years had he ever dared address Gabriel, or any Archangel, with such informality. Well, except for Michael in concern of the rubber duck, but he had been in disguise then and…

Gabriel muttered angrily, brushing down his sleeves and now himself scattering stardust everywhere. The other angel laughed again and smiled past Gabriel, directly at Aziraphale.

No… not at Aziraphale. At the celestial spheres beyond him. But Aziraphale could be forgiven for the mistake. The look of adoration on the angel's face was one that, in later years, would be reserved just for the Principality of the Eastern Gate.

"_You go too fast for me,"_ Aziraphale had once said. And now it almost seemed justified… How could he not have been overwhelmed when faced with the full adoration once lavished on the stars themselves?

The angel's eyes.

Aziraphale was riveted. They were… they were exquisite. The emerald green of a garden.

"You've heard," Gabriel said with a huff, "that each of the four Archangels is to receive a Principality as his aid and companion."

"Yes," the angel responded, stretching out his arms. Oh, how Aziraphale knew that stance. Feigned disinterest, while coiled and listening for every word. Even then… he had been coiled… "I hear you're getting some stooge named Sandalphon. Ha! Have fun with that!"

Gabriel straightened out. "The Almighty has informed me that Sandalphon will be a tireless worker and unwavering in his loyalty to me and to the Law of Heaven."

"Sounds like a real life of the party," the angel mused, flicking celestial specks from under his nails. Aziraphale wondered… what would that same angel pay to be hold just one of those star flecks between his fingers now…

"Uriel and Michael are still waiting on their righthand men."

"Hah! Now that's a start in life… You open your eyes and boom, there's Michael's pinched face. That'll be a lark to see. And Uriel." As the angel pushed back another stray lock of hair, Aziraphale could see silver flecks across his temples, like those that Uriel wore in gold. But not like Uriel's at all. These were the silver of stars. Of scales. "Well, the poor little dear of a Principality won't know what–"

"Aziraphale."

Aziraphale froze. He had been spotted. Gabriel turned curtly and Aziraphale braced himself for the denouncement. But no… Gabriel was looking only to his companion. There wasn't defeat in his face. Almost indulgence. As of a big brother. Aziraphale looked between the two of them. No… It wasn't possible.

The angle with constellations in his hair swallowed. _"Aziraphale…"_ he tested the name out on his lips for the first time in all of existence and Aziraphale shivered. There was starlight clinging to those lips. "But that's…"

"He shall be the Guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden."

The angel's entire body seemed to glow, to shine out, and a smile that was brighter than all the Heavens shone from his face. "Eden? The Garden? But that means… the Almighty….?"

"Yes," Gabriel said with a nod. He then squared his shoulders, as was his custom when about to make an official decree: "You will have Her permission to tend the Garden yourself. Once you have finished crafting the fruits of the skies, you make take to the fruits of the Earth. It is a great honor, and will be your greatest duty – Raphael, one of we four Archangels."

Aziraphale stood thunderstruck as Raphael punched his fist into the sky with a _wahoo!_ His own shock mixed and mingled with the incandescent joy of this… no, not angel, Archangel. Raphael. One of the original four. After the fallen Satan, the greatest of the angels.

_You…_ Aziraphale stared at him. _Why did you never tell… I suppose I never asked… But you… And I… I was meant to be… Your companion? _It was too much. It was all too too much. _As Eve was made companion to Adam…_

"And Aziraphale…" his own name from Raphael's lips brought him out of his stupor. But Raphael was rushing on, "I'll finally have someone with whom I can share it all!" He smiled and it was as though the stardust had now broken upon his incandescent green eyes. _"Aziraphale,"_ he said again, like the first prayer of the universe. "Azi _Raphale… Aid of Raphael…"_

On Raphael's face was reflected all the wonder that Aziraphale felt as, across time and space, the origin of his name was revelation to them both.

"Come on then," Gabriel laughed a little too hard, clearly uncomfortable with the waves of emotion pulsating off Raphael. "It'll still be a little while before you meet him. The Almighty is a little tied up at the moment. What _have _you and Satan been up to that created such a fuss?"

Raphael laughed and launched into a long and very funny story, with no end of hilarity. Something ridiculous, inconvenient and harmless. Something that the demon Aziraphale knew all too well would have come up with. Aziraphale wanted to listen. He wanted to listen because it sounded like just the sort of thing he would be interested in, and he wanted to listen because it would keep his mind from wandering to the way that Raphael's star-sparkled lips formed his name for the firs time. _"Aziraphale."_

But he was unable to listen. Because suddenly Raphael's voice was all around him. No… not Raphael's… Crowley's. Aziraphale could not be certain how he knew the difference, but he did. He did. Perhaps… perhaps it was the rasp… the embers in his throat that never fully died, but had not yet been kindled in Raphael. But it was beautiful all the same. Aziraphale had always thought so.

_I didn't know… I didn't know that, by the time I met him… __**My **__Principality… I would no longer be Raphael._ Aziraphale stopped, the emotion of the voice washing over him. So different from the joy now exuding from Raphael. How was he hearing this? _It's only through this Principality that my own divine name will ever live on… the name She gave me. Only through him. _

This was wrong. Aziraphale shouldn't have been hearing this. If this was just a past event, then it should be perfectly preserved. It should not have… these waves of feeling, of remorse, of bitterness, of love…

Aziraphale realized with a pang of dread that he was not in a perfectly preserved event from long ago. No. These were Crowley's memories. Not Raphael's. Crowley's. Crowley had always said that Hell had a way of leaking into the mind to decree him orders whenever it wished. He had always said how he hated the invasion of his person. Well, it now appeared that it was a two-way link. Hell had not invaded his mind; it had plundered it. And now Hell had all these memories… all this pain… and had waited until the perfect moment to inflict it all over again on Crowley's consciousness. Dredge up everything he had laid to rest.

Again, Aziraphale remembered the gold embossed note with a sickening lurch.

_A gift to the demon Crowley, to remind him that he always has a home._

A home in Hell, and only in Hell. Not on Earth. Not with Aziraphale. A reminder of where he belonged, and where he did not. Aziraphale closed his eyes and tried to block out Crowley's voice. Never mind opening his partner's mail. _This_ was an intrusion beyond intrusions. But the voice persisted.

_Long after Raphael was charred and blistered ash, cast of out Heaven, Aziraphale would honor the name as I, Crowley, knew I never could. _

Aziraphale wanted to cry out. To scream it wasn't true. That he had seen Raphael, had seen Crawly, had seen Crowley, and they were all the same angel. As kind and as good, as impossible to deal with and as exquisite as he had ever been. Aziraphale wanted to scream all of this, but at the mention of the words _charred and blistering ash, _his mouth filled with soot and his vision, instead of going white, went black. He tried to reach out an arm, but it grasped at nothing. Just at Time, long since passed. The final thing he saw was Gabriel, his arm around Raphael's narrow shoulders in a comradely gesture that, with a twitch, could become a vice grip.

**…**

**I wanted this story to feed into the adoration that Crowley feels towards Aziraphale across the length and breadth of their friendship on Earth. Crowley did fall in love with Aziraphale on the walls of Eden, but that fall was all the more agonizing, knowing that they had once been made for one another. **

**But not anymore.**


	3. CR-A-PHAEL

**Chapter Three**

**C-RA-PHAEL**

The first thing Aziraphale saw was darkness. Then shards of light splintered around him, like sparks from a kiln. Reds and yellows, pinks and blues. He shielded his eyes, squinting to see the lank silhouette bursting into illumination by starlight. But if this was a kiln, then Raphael was working with no mallet. As more and more lights flew up around them, Aziraphale came closer to Raphael as he worked. He watched as the Archangel's long and spindly fingers danced around the heavens, intertwining with each other, then exploding apart, releasing ten new stars with every snap of his fingers.

The snap of those fingers. How Aziraphale loved it. No. This was no mallet. This was a chisel more exquisite than any set to marble in the Renaissance.

Something was wrong.

As Aziraphale watched him, he saw that Raphael's robe was askew. There was soot on his face, and not from working with the fire of Heavenly bodies. His movements were no longer fluent as they had been the first time Aziraphale had seen him. He no longer looked like a conductor standing before the greatest symphony of creation. No. Not languidly relishing the work. But completing it with speed and fervor.

Where there had once been starlight in those beautiful green eyes, now there was only fear. And absolute determination.

Aziraphale wanted to reach out a hand and touch one of the Archangel's narrow shoulders. He knew it wouldn't do any good. And yet…

As he reached out across the expanse of space, a boom sounded and angels poured through the clouds, bathing Raphael and Aziraphale in a strobe light of divine accusation. Aziraphale froze in place but Raphael barely spared them a glance. He snatched up into his arms the last of the stars he had been working on – an assortment of jewels more precious than word or thought could express and, with the precision of an archer, he cast them across the distance of space and watched them come to rest in their places, scattering across the Heavens with the tickle and click of a clock's final gear setting into place.

For a moment's breath he watched as the universe was set into motion, his arm lowering from the throw, his mouth almost caught in a smile. Then that arm was wrenched behind his back by an angel and he let out a cry of pain as another forced him to his knees.

"What are you doing!" Aziraphale burst out. "He isn't doing anything wrong! Can't you see that? Stop it!"

Gabriel, now clad as a warrior in a gold breastplate, strode forward through the ranks to look down at his fellow Archangel. "To think, you didn't even try to flee… like your _master."_ He spat out the final word.

"Did Satan escape?" Raphael asked dully. Aziraphale turned to look at him. The Archangel had been so full of energy moments before. So dynamic in his actions. Now, he was sapped. As though he had spent all his celestial strength in that throw and had no more to give. He looked up at Gabriel through tousled red hair.

The war, Aziraphale realized. Hell meant for Crowley to see, not only the beginning, but the end of the beginning. He swallowed as he took it in. This was the apprehension of his best friend. His dearest companion. This was a moment Aziraphale had always known must have existed, once, in remote antiquity, but had never dreamed to imagine.

"Of course not," Gabriel scoffed. "He was captured and brought back to face God's wrath."

"Her _wrath..."_ Raphael tried the word on his tongue and found it rancid. "I did not know she had that." Was this statement of Raphael's the first bitterness in Heaven? Gabriel did not seem to notice. Aziraphale's heart quietly bled.

Gabriel looks around them. "So, what was this final star system of yours that was so important you chose it over even the chance of escape?"

Raphael cast his gaze up to the Heavens. At the stars. The last stars he would ever create. Though they were surrounded by air, Aziraphale felt a wave of emotion crash into his chest, wash over and around him and, for a moment, raise him above the grime of Heaven. It was warm and loving and tender. Raphael's emotions. Crowley's memories.

_As if I would ever have trusted my designs to any but myself. And this one above any other. It was meant as a gift. A welcome gift. A birth gift. To someone… I will never meet now. I may have helped make it. But he was my inspiration…_

His eyes took in the two glittering stars, so close that to the Human eye, they would appear as one entity. "Alpha Centauri…" he whispered.

Aziraphale's knees stuttered. "No…"

Gabriel looked up briefly and then, as though already bored with God's wonders, quipped. "Fascinating." With a reared arm and a brutal punch, he knocked Raphael out cold. The stars went dark.

…

Aziraphale's feet crashed back into solid cloud. It had felt as though he were carried by a single feather and the place into which it embedded in his back now smarted. He reached a hand to try and rub his shoulder, now looking about him. His hand stilled.

The four Archangels of Heaven stood assembled. Or rather, three of them stood – the Archangels Gabriel, Michael and Uriel, and between them, on the marble floor, gasping for air, his wings spread out behind him on the ground, feathers in disarray, his red hair falling around him like unspilled blood, was the Archangel Raphael.

"You were on thin ice already from your friendship with Satan," Gabriel said with detachment.

"But now we learn that you have been asking _questions..."_ Michael crossed her arms, a sneer on her face, her perfectly quaffed hair bobbing as she jerked her head at the word 'questions.' "Seeking to gain access to your- the Principality _Aziraphale."_

Aziraphale's lips parted. _No. No please._ He looked from the Archangels in Judgment to the Archangel beneath their grip. _No. Not for this. Please, by G- by all the love between us two, do not let this have been the reason. Not this. Not this. Not-_

"Did you think to corrupt more angels, though your hellish master was already found out?" Uriel boomed in that quiet, thunderous voice of hers.

"All I did was ask questions," Raphael whimpered. The voice was the shattered glass of a beautiful handblown Murano sculpture, and it broke through Aziraphale and cut him with every shard. "Please... What does he look like? Or she? Will they love the stars? The garden? Will they have love and reverence all of Gods creature, great and small?"

A chill wracked through Aziraphale. Yet he sweated as with a fever. And not a breath of air moved in the Halls of Heaven. Across time he felt the echo of his own voice. No. Brother Francis's voice, talking with young Warlock Downing.

"_Remember, young master, as you grow, to have love and reverence for all of God's creatures, great and small."_

"Stop your whining," Michael snarled. "I've lost my Principality to your vile Prince of Darkness. Do you see me scrambling in the dirt?"

"The angel who loved the shifting of shapes… chameleons..." Raphael whispered. He looked at Michael. "And this doesn't hurt you? Hurt you to be separated from your true companion?"

Confusion flickered across Michael's face. Followed by anger. Ligur, Aziraphale realized. They were talking about Ligur. He remembered now the satisfaction on Michael's face when she had brought that holy water to Hell for Crowley's trial. How, not knowing that it was Aziraphale in Crowley's corporation, she had met his gaze with vicious satisfaction as she poured the water out into the bathtub. Revenge. It had been revenge, for her Principality. For whom she had cared. Even then. Even now. Millennia after the Fall, the bond of Archangel and Principality had been stronger than Heaven and Hell and…

"Silence," Gabriel's foot came down on Raphael's shoulder and ground him back down into the floor before Michael could answer. His voice thundered over the expanse, drowning out Raphael's yelp. "If I have my way, your Principality will be a good, law abiding angel, and none of your contamination shall ever spread to him. He'll know his place," he said to the Archangel under his heel. Aziraphale's fists clenched in futility. In despair at the nothing he could do. In that oath Aziraphale felt the chains that would coil around him in the centuries to come. The chains he had only just broken… with Crowley… at Armageddon.

Raphael lay coiled in pain.

"You were right, Michael," Uriel said with too much pleasure in her voice. "He really is scrambling in the dirt."

"No longer an Archangel. Just a creepy, crawly snake." Gabriel smiled. "The Almighty is none too happy with you and the rest of Satan's little posy. You should have been more careful. Then maybe you could have avoided punishment."

"What…" Raphael gasped out, "What is… _'punishment?'"_ His beautiful red curls, the red of bards' songs, now hung riddled with knots rather than galaxies.

Punishment. The word had not existed until that moment.

The three remaining Archangels looked down at their brother, almost with pity at his ignorance.

"Guess we'll have to stop calling you Raphael," Uriel said, ignoring the question.

"Not RAPHAEL then…"

"_CRAPHAEL?"_

"CRAWLPHAEL?"

Aziraphale watched helplessly. "Stop it…" he whispered. Each laughed-out butchery of the Archangel's name was like a butchery of Raphael's person. A lash across his back. It was too much. Aziraphale couldn't take it. "Stop it!" he ran through their ranks and tried to wrap his arms around the angle he had never known. Aziraphale's hands passed right through him. He almost cried in frustration. He could not change what had happened. He could only sit here, invading Crowley's most intimate and terrible memories.

"_CRAWLEY,"_ Gabriel settled on coolly.

Raphael's lip curled. He looked up past Aziraphale by his side, up at his fellow Archangels. His green eyes shone with a fire that had not been there before. Perhaps this had been the birth of this too? This rebellion, not at the Almighty, but at such degradation. "Oh yes, very original. You always did lack _imagination,_ you three. Thank God you never got your hands on the heavenly cosmos. What a drab, _boring_ thing it would have been then."

Rebellion may have been new, but it was instantly recognizable. Uriel punched him full on the mouth and Raphael's head cracked against the marble floor with a thud and heavy thump. Golden blood spattered across the floor. The first blood spilt in Heaven? Uriel had always had the strongest right hook, after Gabriel.

"I'd have thought you'd be tired of taking a beating," Michael quipped.

"You always had too much _imagination,"_ Uriel said it like a dirty word.

"Is this what She wants?" Raphael rasped, running his arm across his mouth, smearing gold up to the elbow. He looked from one of his siblings to the other. Aziraphale stared fixated at those green eyes, where disbelief churned amidst confusion and defiance. "Can this really be what She wants? But why? Why?"

"There you go with your infernal questions again," Uriel spat, recoiling as though she might be contaminated. _Questions. Imagination._

"I have been placed in charge of the Almighty's Great Plan," Gabriel said formally. "I am its executor."

"But that's... That's..."

"_Ineffable,"_ Aziraphale whispered mournfully, beyond the hearing of the conference of Archangels. Who could look at Raphael, artisan among angels, broken like a toy, and claim understanding of Her Plan? Then, something stirred in Aziraphale's memory, and he thought back to the look on Crowley's face at their first meeting, on the walls of Eden. _"The Great Plan's 'Ineffable?'"_ the serpent had chorused. There had been humor in his voice. And curiosity. Still asking his questions, even at the beginning. Even after everything.

"Speaking of creeping, crawling snakes, didn't you intend the animal Snake to be a patron of healing for the humans?" Gabriel asked without paying much mind to Raphael's weak nod. "Yes, I believe you even put up a consolation to that effect." He clapped his hands as though winding down a meeting. "Well then, you can take it with you! It can be the beast form of one of the damned! How's that, eh? Never say I'm not generous."

He smiled with too many teeth and Aziraphale watched in horror as, with a jolt of pain, Raphael clasped a hand to one of his temples, where the flakes of silver scales had been. The stench of burning hair began to fill to room. Raphael's hands, those beautiful hands that had decorated God's works with the precision of an inventor, shook past all use or function.

"You were always God's favorite of us four Archangels, baby brother," Michael adjusted a ruff of her sleeve, wrinkling her nose at the smell. "Just as Satan was always the favorite of the Heavenly Host. Well, now look where it got you."

"_But…why?"_ Raphael breathed through an aching jaw, as though he were a cave, and this was to be his last echo, even in the face of the landslide that would bury him.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. "Why? Come on! Use your _imagination._ But then, I doubt that even you could _imagine_ what comes next." In one swift motion he reached down and clamped his arms around Raphael's narrow shoulders, pinning his hands to him. Raphael cried out. Aziraphale cried out too as Gabriel lifted Raphael from his arms.

Aziraphale could now acutely feel the pain in Raphael's wings. They were delicate works of artistry. They were not meant to be held like this. Raphael thrashed feebly. But Gabriel had always been the strongest of the four.

Aziraphale scrambled up. He could do nothing. He batted around, useless. _Useless!_ Finally, he ran around to look over Gabriel's shoulder, at Raphael's face. He tried to cup that beautiful face in his hands. Tried to imbue him with some calm. Some sense that it would all be alright.

_It will be alright…Raphael. You'll see. It will be alright. Not then. Not in this time. But later. Now. It is… all alright now… isn't it, Crowley? Now… in the present… after the Apocalypse… with me…_

"Gabriel… please…" Raphael whispered.

From where Aziraphale watched he could see those beautiful green eyes well with tears. Gabriel had always been the leader, Uriel with enforcer, Michael the plotter. And Raphael… Raphael had been the artist. The youngest and most delicate of them. And as Aziraphale watched, he saw that Gabriel was like a hammer against stained glass, barbarous and cruel.

Without Aziraphale realizing it, the marble floor beneath them had parted… a single tile had fallen through, and now they all stood gathered on dark and storming clouds. Aziraphale looked down and nausea the like of which he had never felt overwhelmed him. He was staring into the abyss. He clasped a hand to his mouth. Not the abyss above them, now filled with the beautiful nebulas of Raphael's gentle touch.

It was a black tunnel of poisonous mass, illuminated in cracks and crashes by eruptions of flame and magma. Like Heaven, it was new. No basement yet. No enclosed space to protect from the churning heat and scolding damnation. Aziraphale could not see the bottom. He knew he did not wish to. Hell was below them, the maw unformed, unmade, and ready to be filled.

Gabriel leaned over and pressed his lips against his brother's burning temples. "How's this for Spontaneity, _Crawly?"_

He allowed just enough time for the look of realization of dawn across Raphael's face. For him to feel behind him and beneath him what he did not yet see. Then the grip in which he held the Archangel tightened and Gabriel took hold of his wings in his great hands. In horror, Aziraphale watched and felt, just as Raphael felt, the hollow bones of his wings disjoint and then splinter beneath Gabriel's fingers.

Gabriel let go, and Raphael fell with a scream.

Aziraphale dove after. Without thought. Without pause.

…

He hurtled down the narrow tunnel of cloud, of soot, of ash. He tried to fly. It could barely be called flying. He reached for Raphael a thousand times, screamed a thousand times, "Take my hand!" "For pity's sake, dearest, _take my hand!"_

Raphael neither heard nor felt him.

No. Not Raphael. As the Archangel tumbled through the air, they both knew the bones of his wings would never mend into their perfect arches. As he careened downward, the falling angel felt the feathers begin to burn and char, the smell of sulfur in his nose, his mouth, his lungs. Aziraphale could not say how long they fell together. The destruction of such beauty seemed to happen in an instant, and yet eons spanned across the time it took to dismantle so perfect a creation of God.

And Hell had intended for each moment to be relived when they sent Crowley that feather in a parcel of satin black and embossed gold.

Aziraphale reached out and clutched at him as they plummeted, spinning and turning as one. He fastened himself to the angel. _We are as one. Lashed together. We are as one. We sink or swim as one. We're on our side._ In some part of his mind Aziraphale realized he did not have to feel all this. He did not have to feel all that the falling Archangel did. He could pull away, let go the contact, allow himself to be taken after the falling angel as though in an elevator. An aquarium. Perfectly safe. Perfectly civilized. Simply watching while, breaking through the abyss, his wings burning, his lungs screaming, hurtled to destruction the angel once known as Raphael. This horror and pain had been preserved… _extracted_ from Crowley's most secret memories… and stored on file for any bureaucrat to witness.

All that was needed was one feathery touch.

But Aziraphale was not like anyone else. His feeling had been so interwoven with Crowley's for so long, he would never have dreamed of pulling away now. Aziraphale gave up. He drew in his wings and let the plunge take him, holding to his broken angel. If he could not prevent the death of Raphael, then he would be there for the birth of Crowley. Aziraphale gave in to the Fall.

As the Archangel fell, he knew he would never be Raphael again. His eyes burned. Aziraphale wailed in despair, his tears evaporating from his face, at what the fallen angel could not yet know – that those large and extraordinary green eyes that had held in them all Life, were _boiling_ and _steaming_ from vibrant green to an acid yellow.

_And so,_ Aziraphale again heard his friend's voice all around them, filled with self-loathing in that tunnel of lashing flames, even as Aziraphale clutched the memory of that friend in his arms. _And so… Crawly... fell from Heaven._

Crowley and Aziraphale plummets into the sea of sulfur.

The impact broke his grip on Crowley. The connection of the blinding burning pain was severed as Aziraphale rose above the surf. In place of pain rose panic at the loss. He scrambled as he searched, wading to where Crowley had fallen. He couldn't find him. Where was he? How long did Aziraphale stare frantically at the expanse of molten brightness, a blight against the oppressive dark, so different from the molten Heavens that Raphael had crafted like a goldsmith? How many times did Aziraphale see an arm breach the surface of the sea, fighting, battling for survival? Only to lose it in the surf of sparks as he ran to him.

Though Aziraphale couldn't see Crowley, he could sense him. He could sense his pain and his anguish saturating the air like fuming gasses. He wondered how many other angels were in such oceans, spread all through the boiling abyss. They would sear Raphael until there was nothing left. Not his name. Not his eyes. Not his wings. Not his ethereal essence. They would not stop until there was nothing left. At the fringes of his mind, Aziraphale felt the oppression of a pain that he could never fully understand. Never comprehend. The complete destruction of body and soul. In an age before time, when stars were just being born, Aziraphale watched as one was extinguished in fire.

And then the fighting stopped. Time passed but never moved. Would it never move again? Then, with the hiss of venom and the stench of rotten eggs that bespoke sulfur, the sea evaporated. There was only Crowley. Naked, shattered Crowley. His wings burned to nothing. The feathers charcoal black now, for all eternity. Aziraphale watched as his hair streaked, blistering fire, eating away the ballads of the Heavens.

He stood watching, his hands now limp by his side. He had spent so long searching for him. Crying for him. Trying to reach him. Now… the weariness and the futility of it all crashed on him once more. The damage was done. Aziraphale stood no further from Crowley, embers scoring into his skin, than he had stood from Raphael, when the Archangel first landed before him, bathed in starlight.

After another eon, Aziraphale watched him try to stand. He screamed in the dark. His body was not his own. It transformed into a serpent. Tears rolled down Aziraphale's face. The snake had been meant as a symbol of healing? And the Heavens did this… They did _this?_ He wondered how many times it had rankled Gabriel when Aziraphale had reported Crowley a 'wily serpent,' praise so thinly veiled in the insult. Here was the birth of that serpent. And he would never be able to change his skin. He was branded. The tail thrashed, the head beat itself again the ground with such ferocity that Aziraphale wanted to pull the creature in his arms, wrap it around himself and cry out, _"Here! Squeeze me! I can take it! All your pain! But please, please, please do not hurt yourself any more my darling!"_ Clearly terrified of what he had become, the serpent transformed back into the fallen angel.

A form that he detested even more.

Crowley writhed and screamed again and Aziraphale wanted to run to him, but he could not. It was in the past. The distant past now. _Though perhaps not so distant when we first met..._

Mournfully, Aziraphale's eyes trained over Crowley's wings, healing from the break but never properly to reformed. Something caught his eye. Aziraphale's breath hitched. That glimmer of light… No. It couldn't be. Nothing could have survived the fire. The brimstone. The eons in the boiling sea. Nothing could have survived the Fall. …But there it was.

A feather.

Bright as starlight against the chard darkness around them. Fresh tears fell down Aziraphale's cheeks in rivers. He didn't seem to be able to make them stop. Crowley… had not fully fallen. Somehow, he had held on. Perhaps it was that confounded imagination of his. He could not _imagine_himself as fallen, so even Heaven and Hell could not make it truly so. There was still hope! There was still–

The crunch of gravel and coal came from the dark, followed by the buzzing of flies to a carcass. Aziraphale recoiled into the blackness. There they stood, Beelzebub and Hastur, Crowley's once masters.

"So… That's what a fallen Archangel looks like," Beelzebub said, taking in Crowley's naked brokenness, unimpressed.

"Don't take that attitude, my lord," Haster said, a cruel smile spreading across his face. "We could use him… they say that he was all set to be sent into the Garden. He'll know the terrain. _We_ could send him instead… Get him to make some trouble. What do you–"

Hastur's breath hitched. Crowley had shifted. His wings had shifted. The feather gleamed. "Well," be breathed, almost in wonder, shielding his eyes a little, "I guess you can't keep a good Archangel down. That _is_ new."

Beelzebub said nothing. She merely reached down and fastened a hand around Crowley's wing.

"No!" Aziraphale cried out as she pulled the wing to its full expansion. Crowley let out a sob.

"NO!" Aziraphale cried out again as he fully realized what was about to happen. What must have happened for that feather to have ended up in that satin box. As carefully, oh so carefully, Beelzebub took the single white feather between her fingers.

"NO! NO! _NO! YOU CAN'T! IT'S NOT YOURS! __**IT MEANS HE HASN'T FULLY FALLEN! IF YOU TAKE THAT–"**_

She plucked the feather. As it detached from Crowley's wing, the air was cut off from Aziraphale's lungs. He stood, eyes wide in horror, lungs filled with despair. He watched as Beelzebub allowed Crowley's wing to collapse back on itself like so much trash. Crowley was senseless now. He did not even notice the last sliver of divinity ebb from him. Beelzebub twirled the feather between her fingers before tucking it away in the folds of her robe.

With that gesture, she snuffed out the light.


	4. Archangel Raphael, Demon

**The amazing observation about Asclepius and Socrates was made by ****samtalksfunny**** over on Tumblr. Thanks so much. As though I didn't cry hard enough the first time I read _Phaedo._**

**…**

**Chapter Four**

**Archangel Raphael, Demon**

Aziraphale fell back into the throne in Crowley's apartment with a crash. He gasped for air. Real air. The air of the here and now, not that of nostalgia laced with the poison of a living nightmare. He shivered with cold sweat and looked down in horror at the feather between his fingers. It trembled, silently and terribly, its secrets all spilled out.

Would Crowley ever forgive him this breach? For that was what it was. Uninvited and unwelcomed, Aziraphale had trespassed on that part of Crowley which, through the whole of Human history, Aziraphale had hardly dared mention, let allow address. Only once… only once did Aziraphale brush his fingers tantalizingly over the subject, as over the nap of Crowley's long neck.

_"You were an angel once,"_ he had said quietly at the bandstand, when so many truths – Crowley's – and so many lies – his own – churned in the air between them. Crowley had looked at him, half faltering, half dismissive, and brushed him off with a, _"That was a long time ago."_ Aziraphale remembered the duality of the remark, given with such indifference and yet such bitterness.

And now the horror of that long ago was emblazoned on Aziraphale's soul. A muscle twitched in Aziraphale's jaw, his eyes riveted to the feather. Not merely a dream catcher of Crowley's worst memories, not simply the vessel of all Crowley's most terrible and intimate feelings, but a Revelation from Hell…

_You did not Fall. We made you Fall. And now you have nothing but Us._

That was the message Hell had sent Crowley. Hell had sent it, racking up all the worst traumas it could muster, and had boiled them until those traumas were like a fresh sea of sulfur which to burn away all the joy Crowley had discovered… all the happiness…

Aziraphale almost snarled. He could just imagine it. Hell would not have wanted to part with the feather. No. Not this lustrous sliver of divinity, perfectly preserved, not simply from an angel, but from an Archangel of old, when the Universe itself was new and exquisite. They would have wanted to keep it. To hoard it, like a trophy. It would only have been the events of the Armageddidn't, and the botched trial that followed, that could have convinced Hell to part with so precious a theft, all in the greater service of striking Crowley down in whatever way they knew how.

No angel of this day and age could possess such a feather. Aziraphale's own had worn in, like his coat. They had aged and matured with the strength in his wings and the dust of parchment and books. No angel in Heaven either, with the rigamortis that had set in there. No, there the feathers would be stiff, starched on the undiluted morality of centuries.

Gently, hesitantly, still irresistibly drawn, Aziraphale ran his thumb over the bottommost down of the feather, and a knot grew in his throat. As soft and as beautiful as a child's cheek, the feather itself seemed to cry out again the memories it contained.

With that touch, from across the ages, Aziraphale again heard the echo of Raphael's first pronouncement of, _"Aziraphale…"_

Eyes closed, his memory conjuring the light of stars, shaping the syllables, the angel shuddered.

"Aziraphale."

The angel's eyes flew open and his head snapped to look at the open door. There stood Crowley.

Wonderful, exquisite Crowley. How could he have gone through so much, taken such blows, and yet remained unchanged. For he was the same as he had ever been. The only changes that he bore were the natural ones of growth and age. 6,000 years of it. He carried the strains and disappointments on him, as all who travel life and time needs must. But he was not altered. _The Archangel of yesteryear would have recognized the demon of today._ And would have felt no shame. Only burning curiosity at the changes brought with immortality, and life after the Fall.

Crowley's hair was the red of fire now, but still every bit of sunset. A deeper sunset, closer now to the dark of twilight. And his eyes… Aziraphale could just see them, over the rim of Crowley's dark glasses. He had always known that Crowley's eyes were a source of pain for the demon. He knew why now. And yet, oh… He wanted to cross the room and rip those glasses off Crowley's face. Break them. Take Crowley's face in his hands as he had been unable to take Raphael's and stare into those eyes and tell him… tell him how beautiful his eyes were… that only Crowley could have such eyes… that no matter what Heaven and Hell had done to him… they might have robbed Crowley's eyes of the stars, but never of their fire. Those eyes…

They were now fixed on the feather in Aziraphale's hand.

Crowley had been carrying a potted plant. A new addition to his Garden. Or… perhaps… a new addition to Aziraphale's bookshop. There were new shelves in Crowley's flat. New plants in Aziraphale's shop. They had never put it into words. Never said how each of their individual spaces was becoming their space, together. Never uttered the phrase "moving in together." But it was there.

Now that pot crashed to the floor and shattered.

"Crowley," Aziraphale saw his demon stumbled back. Without thinking, he launched out of the throne and followed. He caught Crowley by the wrist as he had been unable to catch Raphael. Crowley shrunk from his grasp. No. Not from his grasp. From the feather in his other hand. He stared at it in horror.

"What… what is…"

Aziraphale realized with a surge of terror what would happen if Crowley touched the feather. What he would relive. What he would see and feel, as Aziraphale had seen and felt it. No. So much worse. Infinitely worse. Aziraphale had only been a spectator. His wings remained unbroken on his back. Hastily yet carefully, the angel tucked the feather into his breast pocket, against his heart. He had invented the breast pocket to hold the trinkets of affection between human. At least, that was what he'd told Crowley. He had certainly not invented it after that one time Crowley passed him his dark silk handkerchief to wipe the crumbs from his face.

And now the pocket closed around the feather. Out of sight but far from out of mind.

Both his hands free now, Aziraphale reached out to grip the demon. "Crowley, my dear, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I thought it was a trap. It _was_ a trap. And I didn't want you to face it so I–"

Crowley wasn't hearing a word. Not a single word. He, who never blinked much, was blinking, looking from Aziraphale, to his breast pocket, to the other room where Aziraphale had just been.

"Crowley, listen to me. I've got you. I've…"

"But that was mine." When he finally spoke, the voice was broken as it came from his demon, and Aziraphale felt him tremble in his grip. Tears streamed out from behind the dark glasses. Confusion… and total understanding. "That was _mine."_ His voice cracked. He scanned the desk. He saw the wrapping paper baring his infernal name. They had dared to brand such a package, with what it contained, with his infernal name.

_This is who you are. We know, because look. We're the ones who stripped you of who you were._

And Crowley understood. Understood what must have been taken from him in the eons when he had lost all reason. No longer Raphael. Not yet Crawly. Only the serpent. The fallen snake.

"And you are not theirs." Now Aziraphale did take Crowley's face between his hands. "You are not theirs anymore. They cannot hurt you. Neither of them. Heaven and Hell cannot hurt you. Because you are not theirs." He was kissing Crowley's forehead. Kissing away his tears. He was asking to take Crowley's glasses off, and was now doing so with nodded but mute consent. As Aziraphale had never dared to presume before, he was kissing Crowley's beautiful eyes. His eyelids were damp and paper-think beneath Aziraphale's lips.

"You are mine," he said, fiercely, defiantly, allowing his voice to bleed with all the power he had not possessed when Raphael had fallen to Gabriel. He would not be useless anymore. He would never be useless again. "Remember what you said…" he brought Crowley's chin up a little, pulling him from his daze, "that night on the bench, waiting for the bus. My dear, please… remember what you said…"

"We're on our own side," Crowley said quietly. "We have to choose our faces wisely."

"And we did," Aziraphale said, cutting through the stupor, on the brink of which Crowley teetered, not allowing him to fall. Never, never, never again allowing him to fall. "We did, remember? That night, before they took us to our executions? And we promised for all the nights thereafter… No one can hurt us. No one can own us. Make us what we are not. Everything we are. Every unfathomable depth… belongs to one another."

How long has Crowley tried to tell him exactly this? All of this? Now it was Aziraphale's turn. He had been a deaf student, but he would now pour 6,000 years of learning back into the pitcher from whence it came. He felt himself glowing with it. Felt the feather against his chest glowing. This feather might hold the memories of Raphael, but he had been Crowley for infinitely longer.

And Aziraphale, Aziraphale with his two wings _full_ of celestial feathers, was the carrier of all those memories. With a role of his shoulders, he spread his wings now and wrapped them around Crowley, willing him to understand. Crowley gasped at the sudden burst of air and light. Sensing that Crowley might not stay upright much longer, Aziraphale carefully guided him to the floor, where they kneeled together, Aziraphale's wings wrapped around them, their pantlegs smearing in the dirt of the fallen houseplant.

"Aziraphale…" As realization dawned on Crowley, Aziraphale braced himself for the look of betrayal. "You… you saw…"

"I'm sorry my dear," he whispered urgently, instinctively tightening his grip around his demon. "I'm so, so sorry for having invaded your privacy. Nothing but the greatest fear for you could ever have driven me to cross such a line. But I thought… I hoped…"

"What did you see… exactly?" Crowley's snake eyes darted across Aziraphale's face, searching, questioning. There was no betrayal there. No resentment. But there was vulnerability, and Aziraphale did not like how it sat on Crowley's face. He would assuage it, if he could.

Aziraphale took a steadying breath. He had always been a peculiarity among the ethereals. Perhaps he now knew why… He had been created to be the companion to an Archangel who Fell. In Heaven, there were the angels who stood with God and lived as celestial beings. In Hell, there were demons who were smote down with Satan, contorting into cruel and unnatural shapes.

But Aziraphale had not fallen for Satan. Through that feather, he had fallen for Raphael. And through all the centuries of Earth's existence, he had fallen for Crowley. It was Crowley by whom he had been smitten. And there had never been a sweeter smiting. Aziraphale was a fallen angel living in celestial bliss. And he would be damned a thousand times if he did not share that grace with Crowley.

He parted his lips._ "Aid to… Raphael…"_ Aziraphale whispered the name that Crowley had not heard in over 6,000 years. And the angel poured into it all the reverence that he had not infused into a single prayer in all that time. He would do that name the same honor that the Archangel had once done his.

**…**

A shudder went through Crowley so violent and so total, he was certain that if he'd still had a soul, it would have cracked in two. To hear that name… his name… from Aziraphale's lips. It was a fantasy he had never dreamed to entertain, not in his darkest hours. It was an ecstasy that burned too near to unspeakable agony. He couldn't stop shaking.

He gaped at Aziraphale, his hand reaching up and gripping at his arm, his lips moving but still unable so speak. But Aziraphale seemed to understand.

Again, Aziraphale took Crowley's face in his hands. The angel seemed to be thinking hard, choosing his words carefully, and Crowley loved him for it. "I am Aziraphale," he began, "Principality, Guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden," he took a breath, "and aid to Archangel Raphael," he swallowed, his face resolute, "Demon, the Serpent Anthony J Crowley. My soul's other half."

The waves of words tumbled over Crowley like a storm. No sooner did the shock of hearing the Archangel's name course though his veins, than Aziraphale was pushing forward. _Demon. Serpent. Anthony J. Crowley._ All his titles on display. His head was swimming. He had never imagined hearing them all together, as Aziraphale recited his own titles together. He had always seen them as separate beings. Separate entities. There had been Raphael. And then there had been the demon that grew out of the Fall. How was it that it felt as though Crowley was drowning and yet had never breathed so freely?

He searched Aziraphale's eyes for answers. And he found the simplest one. The one that had never occurred to him. Not once. To Aziraphale… there was no distinction. What Crowley was now, he had always been. By which logic followed… Aziraphale thought that the Archangel he had been… Crowley still was.

Crowley replayed the titles in his mind, allowing the words to curve with every lilt of Aziraphale's soft voice.

_Aziraphale, Principality, Guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden._

_Archangel Raphael, Demon, the Serpent Anthony J. Crowley._

Just like that. Was it really so simple? Just like that Aziraphale knit together the identities that Heaven and Hell had so ruthlessly pulled asunder?

Again Crowley chanced a glance to the other room and to the discarded packaging. Aziraphale had seen everything. That much was clear. Those bastards Downstairs. It had been a trap laid for him, Crowley. And Aziraphale had rolled up those perfectly pressed French cuffs and had dived into it headfirst.

"Are you alright?" he finally asked, his eyes flitting over Aziraphale to see if there had been any lasting damage. Crowley knew firsthand how overwhelming it could be when Hell played havoc with someone's mind. The thought of that alone sent a residual shudder through him, even as the shaking began to peter off.

Aziraphale steadied him. "Of course I'm alright. Never mind me, dear. Are you… Are you alright…"

Crowley glanced back down to Aziraphale's breast pocket, where he knew that feather to be. That feather. His mind reeled, trying to force back the realization he had come to at its sighting. No. It was impossible. Nothing could have survived the Fall. Perhaps he had lost it during the rebellion. Perhaps Gabriel had ripped apart more than his bones. But then… that did not explain how the feather had come to be in Hell.

He tried to breath calmly. Keep down his panic. Aziraphale shifted closer, rubbing a firm hand along Crowley's back, keeping time to Crowley's breathing. How had it happened? He remembered so much. And yet at times the pain had been so much…

His eyes flickered back up to Aziraphale's face. The angel was no longer looking at him, seemingly lost in thought, content to keep up the steady rubbing of Crowley's back. What had… Aziraphale thought of it all? Of Heaven in the days before the rebellion? Of the ignominy of Crawly's fall? The serpentine shapes he twisted into? The Trial of the Archangels? Of… Raphael himself?_ Of me?_

Oh, and how Crowley had tried to reclaim himself throughout the course of Human history. Had cast aside Crawly. Become Crowley. His own name. His own choice. Even the poor Serpent, he had tried to redeem. The snake had, for a time, become known as the companion of Asclepius, the ancient Greek god of healing. The philosopher Socrates, condemned to death by the city of Athens, had died with Asclepius's name on his lips. Socrates… who was condemned… for asking too many questions. Then the old Greek myths had died away, and again Crowley was alone... with only She as his Almighty.

Crowley had never told Aziraphale any of this. Had never dared. Even now… it had only been a month since Aziraphale had, for the last time, declared them on _opposite sides._ That had all changed. The Apocalypse had happened. Or hadn't. They were on the same side now. But for all the thousands of years they had known one another, Crowley had not dared tell Aziraphale of his Fall. Because… because how could he be certain that, even in the face of what had been done to him, Aziraphale would not still try to justify Heaven?

_"I am not consulted on matters of policy."_ Isn't that what the angel had said at Christ's crucifixion? Hadn't he tried to factor the Flood in as part of God's Plan? Crowley did not think… he would not have been able to endure it if, faced with the truth of his Fall, Aziraphale had shrugged and pointed it out as a regrettable but necessary part of the machinations of the Lord.

Even now… were Aziraphale's old loyalties truly smothered and gone? The feather that had been meant to remind Crowley of his loyalty to his former masters… had it instead reawoken those loyalties in Aziraphale? Doubt and fear began to gnaw at Crowley as though he were nothing but a bone, cracked open with the marrow dripping out.

He wanted to know. Wanted to ask, but did not believe he would get a straight answer. It would be a tender answer. A kind answer. It would be every bit Aziraphale. But Aziraphale's track record did not speak to his giving direct answers or being forthcoming.

Now Crowley's eyes stayed on Aziraphale's breast pocket and did not flicker away. He swallowed. He had to see what Aziraphale had seen. And, which was more, he had to see how Aziraphale had seen it. For that was the nature of memory. It could change. Could alter. Crowley knew. He was a demon. How many times had had tempted someone into forgetting a promise, telling them that it was alright for memory to slip. The feather was a fragile, ancient thing. How much pressure, unwittingly given, would it have taken for Aziraphale to be emblazoned on the ribbing of that down for all of time? Would he find the angel's hands all over the hours of his own creation? His own destruction?

Crowley needed to see Aziraphale… seeing it. Seeing him. He needed to see the imprint of Aziraphale's fingerprints on his heart. Even if the touch would break his heart. He knew the feather would have his answers.

"Give it to me," he whispered.

Aziraphale was already shaking his head. "Crowley, dearest, no. Please. It's what they want. Don't you see, it's what they-"

"Give it to…" Crowley took another steadying breath, determined not to lose his nerve, even as he could feel himself again shaking under Aziraphale's touch. He raised his hand… and pressed his long fingers into the fabric over Aziraphale's breast pocket, over the feather, over Aziraphale's heart. Crowley raised his eyes to meet his angel's. "Please. It won't hurt… if it's you."

With that, Crowley unfurled his black wings. The arches that they formed were more jagged than Aziraphale's. They would never be able to fully extend like the angel's. Crowley's wings were like the hands of a boxer, taught and rigid with sinew from too many fights. Too many falls.

He watched as Aziraphale took them in. No fear. No revulsion. No pity. Just as there had been no pity when he said the Archangel's name. Only warmth. Suddenly… a small sad smile played across Aziraphale's lips… "Like the cosmos," he said, "before you bedecked it with stars." Crowley's grip on the angel's wrists tightened. He shuddered.

Hesitantly, falteringly, Aziraphale slipped his hand out from behind Crowley's back. He still rested his other hand on Crowley's upper arm. Still kept the touch unbroken. But Crowley followed that hand as it trailed between them, to the front of Aziraphale's coat. He could not help it. At the sight of it again, at the sight of the feather as it came back into view, unruffled and pristine, so unlike its once-owner, Crowley had to bend his head to choke down a sob.

To see it once more… Sometimes, when the sulfur again rose above his head, it was almost easier to believe that Crowley had never been an angel. That… what he remembered… that life… forging eternal stars in the beauty of the stratosphere… that it was all a dream. But now… seeing this feather… concrete proof from the life he had tried so hard to forget and yet clung to so desperately in his weakest moments… How could he have never noticed the feather was gone? But he had been so altered in the Fall. So shattered. So empty. His body had been twisted, inverted, become so alien to him. What was one more space in the chasm of his being when he awoke?

"Crowley," Aziraphale had guided the point of the feather to Crowley's black wing. "Crowley, I can still stop this..."

Crowley closed his eyes. "It won't hurt… if it's you," he echoed. "Just do it." He needed to know.

In the instant that Aziraphale pressed the white celestial feather back into Crowley's ink black wings, the angel pressed a kiss to the demon's lips. It was Heaven and Hell, torment and benediction, and Crowley could no longer tell the one from the other. But it was more than that. It was a love such as could only exist on this Earth that they had helped save.

_"Aziraphale,"_ he whispered against that mouth.

_"Aziraphale,"_ he heard himself whisper for the first time in all of time. Crowley opened his eyes and looked around him. Heaven. Gabriel. The days before days.

**…**

Gabriel was talking at his side. It was all as Crowley remembered it. And, for some reason… it wasn't bothering him. Why wasn't it bothering him? Crowley looked down at his hands, glittering from the hours and eons of loving craft, then glanced past Gabriel at his beloved stars. And there… in a vibration in the air… as from a heatwave… he saw him. The imprint of Aziraphale's visit through the halls of Crowley's memories. Crowley could not help the smile that pulled at the corner of his mouth at the look on Aziraphale's face.

_I don't feel alone,_ Crowley thought with wonder. That was the difference.

With a lurch and a stumble, he was prostrate on marble floor now. It was the Trial of the Archangels. So like the Trial of Aziraphale that he had survived one month ago. One month ago... how boring Heaven had become in its modernity. All of that infinite space, and they had turned it into a world of glass and metal. And that was all. He had been right when he said it was a mercy the rest of them never got their hands on the cosmos. Crowley had then looked from Gabriel to Uriel with wrath so quiet and so deadly, it might have been a snake's venom.

If he had been himself, he might have laughed in their faces. Said hello to his fellow Archangels, and told them they had not broken him after all. It was he who had broken them. Them, and their stupid Apocalypse. But he had not been himself. He had been Aziraphale. Kind, brave, stalwart Aziraphale.

...Whom Gabriel had tormented for 6,000 years. And where was Michael? As Crowley saw the demon bring in the hellfire, saw how Heaven intended to execute the angel, _his_ angel, he understood where Michael must be. He swallowed, his mind flickering to Ligur, melting. He had no regrets. Ligur had been a prick, like Michael, and if Crowley found out that Michael'd harmed a hair on Aziraphale's head Downstairs, he would burn Heaven and flood Hell himself. If the humans had been forced to endure Sodom and Gomorrah and the Great Flood, then perhaps it was time for divinity to have a taste as well.

_Be brave. Be noble. Be greater than those around you. Be Aziraphale._

"Shut your stupid mouth and die already." That smile. Gabriel had once flashed Crowley that same smile. Crowley's lips twitched. He suppressed the sneer. He stepped into the fire. If he had been himself, he might have done something drastic. But he was Aziraphale, so he smiled that beautiful bastard smile of Aziraphale's, and breathed out all the Hellfire that the Archangels had once rammed down his throat.

Now in the distance past, as Raphael, Crowley looked up from the floor. He saw whom he expected to see. Michael. Uriel. Gabriel. It was amazing how immortal lives could be so lifeless. No change. No growth. No concept of existence at all.

But as Crowley watched, he saw that the memory had altered. The 'file' on which it was stored had been corrupted. As a lilypond, once waded through, could never be the same pond again, Crowley now saw the imprint of Aziraphale's visit. Felt his angel wrap his arms around him. He… he hardly noticed the trial. And when Gabriel lifted him into that vice grip that had tormented so many of his nightmares, broken so much of him… all he felt was the firm grasp of Aziraphale's hands, holding his face, the angel looking into his eyes.

_It will be alright…Raphael. You'll see. It will be alright. Not then. Not in this time. But later. Now. It is… all alright now… isn't it, Crowley? Now… in the present… after the Apocalypse… with me…_

Crowley blinked back. He was taken out of himself. Out of the memory. His bones splintered and he screamed, but there was Aziraphale. Holding him. Trying so desperately to hold him. _Yes,_ Crowley's mind churned numbly as Gabriel discarded his broken body into the abyss. _It will all be alright._

Crowley closed his eyes. He had seen all that he wanted to see. Now would come the Fall. What idiots they were down in Hell. As though he really needed a feather to remember every burning lash across his soul as he hurtled from the silver city. As if he could ever forget a single moment of the agony–

He gasped as something slapped into him. He blinked. Opened his eyes and, through the hurtling world of broken wings, blackness and fire… there was Aziraphale.

_Take my hand!_ the angel cried out, riding the burning currents of air as best he could. _For pity's sake, dearest, take my hand!_

Crowley's jaw went slack. He wanted to yell at him. Scream. _What are you doing here? What in Hell's name–_

But why? Aziraphale was safe, wasn't he? These were not the angel's memories. No. That was not the point. The point was… the _point_ was… Aziraphale had dived after him. It had been one thing when Aziraphale had seen Raphael. Crowley had been pleased at the imprint of wonder on the angel's face. And the compassion at the trial. It had given Crowley relief beyond measure. Knowing, seeing Aziraphale take his side, kneel by him, try and defend him against his once beloved Heaven… it had helped overwrite the old pains.

But Crowley had never expected… could never have imagined… that Aziraphale would have followed him into the fall. Crowley gasped as Aziraphale banished his wings and, in a free dive, took Crowley in his arms and clamped him to his body. Crowley was on fire. His body was scourged with the falling and his mind… he was sure it would have gone blank by now, as he remembered it going black. Blank in the face of his soul's obliteration. But now… all he felt was Aziraphale. Aziraphale clutching to him. Crying for him. Crying with him. Feeling his pain. His outrage. There was none of the self-loathing that Crowley had felt in his fall. It was all overwhelmed and deafened by the rage in Aziraphale's soul that such a thing could be done to him… to _him._

This… was how Aziraphale had seen it all? Crowley quaked in his arms. What Aziraphale felt… it felt like a brazen sacrilege the likes of which Crowley had never contemplated. Crowley had cried out against his fall. But he had never cursed creation and God herself as Aziraphale now did, clutching Crowley in his arms. It made the soon-to-be demon tremble.

Then they crashed into the sulfur.

It came… and it went. Crowley had felt it so many times. So many times in dreams, in nightmare. It hurt differently now. More..._accurately._ Whether worse or better... Crowley couldn't say anymore. After all, he did have such vivid dreams. It would have seemed more natural to simply give up sleep. But Crowley refused to let them take one more thing from him. One more thing that he enjoyed. So he braved the nightmares for the sleep. And now, once more, be braved the sulfur. And, once more, it broke him.

It was then that he felt it. Or rather, he heard it. Aziraphale's guttural screaming roused him from the darkness. If Crowley really concentrated, through the seared flesh, torn muscles, snapped ligaments and shattered body, he could just feel his broken wing pop a joint as it was stretched beyond its limit.

Ah… there it was… The feather was plucked. No wonder he had not felt it. There had been so little of him left, how could he be blamed when the last of it slipped between his fingers like sand. He wanted to cry. He would have liked to laugh. He did not have the strength for either.

To think… He had not truly Fallen. That was a kick in the teeth. Did he have teeth anymore? Who knew. He had not truly Fallen. Had held on to his divinity. And then, when the beatings were over, divinity had been plucked from him as insignificantly as a feather from a putrid bird's carcass.

So, this had been the point of the package from Hell.

Oh. But it did hurt, after all. So much worse than he could have imagined. Perhaps Gabriel had been right about that, eons ago. There were some things beyond his imagination after all.

Crowley closed his eyes. Ah. There were the tears. How could the tears be hotter than his flesh. He was done. He had seen all. Now he just wanted to feel Aziraphale's arms around him. Wanted to be back in his apartment. He wanted whiskey and laughter and none of the pain.

_No more pain, please._

"AH!" Crowley yelped against the blinding flash of light. Or rather, it had felt blinding after the darkness of the eternal pit. Really, it was just sunlight. He blinked at it, then looked around him, confused. He was in Mesopotamia, with Aziraphale. What was he saying? He was ranting. Ranging about the Flood.

_"Not the kids,"_ he was hissing, not so much disbelieving as willing himself to disbelieve. _"They're not gonna kill kids?"_

And he saw himself… as Aziraphale saw him. Felt, not his own indignation, but what Aziraphale was feeling. The regret at Heaven's actions. The deep respect for Crowley's outrage. The assent.

As though by a single feather between the shoulder blades, Crowley was wrenched away from the scene. Now he was at Golgotha. When Crowley had said he had nothing to do with the crucifixion, and Aziraphale had believed him, and had been glad. Crowley could feel the relief wafting off the angel. The… affection.

Another painful wrench between the shoulders. The French Revolution. Crowley felt how Aziraphale's heart surged to see him, and the demon clutched at his chest. By god he _felt that._ How was he feeling this? Again, relief and pleasure came off Aziraphale upon hearing that Crowley had nothing to do with the Revolution. And he believed the demon without a second through. Crowley's breath was coming in ragged now at all of these compounded moments. If not in action, then in thought, it seemed that Aziraphale had been willing to follow Crowley as surely as he would one day fall after Raphael.

The Second World War, London. Crowley tried to catch his breath. He was rather enjoying this. Crashing through time. Watching as Aziraphale first accused him of wrong doing and then instantly took him on faith when he said otherwise. _It's funny,_ Crowley thought as he hopped in place, gesticulating at idiot Nazis – _I'd never considered that Aziraphale, despite all protestations, really, truly took me, a demon, on faith._ Words echoed in his mind:

_Archangel Raphael, Demon, the Serpent Anthony J. Crowley._

And then the bomb came down. Crowley handed Aziraphale his books. He turned with an offer of _"Lift home?"_ and had just begun picking his way through the rubble, when a tidal wave broke over his back and he almost pitched forward. _Was there a delayed shock from the bomb?_ he thought with a daze.

No. Again, he was feeling Aziraphale's thoughts and emotions. Again he wondered, _why_ was he feeling Aziraphale's thoughts and emotions? And this was a wave… of love. Crowley's breathing hitched. The sensation was pooling against his back, raw and unfettered, coursing through Crowley with the clarity of hellfire and the destructive force of holy water. He wanted to turn around and see Aziraphale's face. But he couldn't turn around. Because this was a memory.

Aziraphale's memory. Of Crowley.

Somehow, in the short moments Aziraphale had pressed the feather to his heart, in his breast pocket… the angel had infused the feather so it now contained, not only the memories of when the demon had been the Archangel Raphael… but all the time thereafter... all the little moments in which Aziraphale had not seen him as a demon at all.

Finally, the memory of Crowley turned to open the door of the Bentley for Aziraphale to get it. As Crowley had watched his own fall from Heaven, now he watched Aziraphale's fall… for him. Here. In the wreckage of this church.

**…**

Crowley gasped and blinked up at Aziraphale.

They were still holding one another on the floor of Crowley's apartment. Crowley looked at him in wonder. Aziraphale had tears rolling down his cheeks. But they were happy tears. He was smiling. Crowley reached up a hand and touched the angel's cheek. A tear rolled onto his finger, shimmering. Like a star. "Why are you crying, angel?"

"Oh, my dear..." With a timid nod, Aziraphale indicated behind Crowley. _"Look."_

The demon turned, and stopped time at the sight. His black wings still spread out above him, the single white feather now fixed in place. Only… the wings were no longer black. Not exactly. Spanning out from Raphael's feather, in an expanse across the midnight plumage, were stars. Each and every constellation that Raphael had ever created, every nebula, every solar system, shimmered in deep violets and heavy blues against the blackness. All of Raphael's works were now reflected against the dark sheen of Crowley's wings. A dark vastness of churning, breathing universe, spilling free from a single origin of light. All that was Crowley, born from what had once been Raphael.

Crowley opened his mouth. No words came out. What words could encompass what he felt. Slowly, hesitantly, as though the shining celestial bodies might fall from him as he had once fallen from them, he brought his wings around them both. What words could equal the sensation of Aziraphale's beautiful hands, so tender from centuries of handling ancient tombs, running down his plumage, the galaxies therein, coming to rest his palm… at Alpha Centauri.

"And so darling… it seems you are once more bathed in starlight," Aziraphale finally broke the silence, his voice flooding with devotion. Crowley's wings, and the cosmos they contained, quavered under the angel's touch. "Goodness," he mused. "I cannot believe I'm saying this, but I am happy that I signed for that package."

Crowley's mind paused. He blinked. He tore his gaze away from his wings and looked back to Aziraphale. "You what?"

"I had to sign for the– Well dear, you remember the Delivery Man, from the end of the Apocalypse?" Absentmindedly, Aziraphale was stroking the demon's wings, lights flickering in and out between his fingers, the universe at the Principality's touch, just as Raphael had once long ago dreamed it would be. "Yes, well he was the one who–"

"Angel," Crowley said politely, doing his utmost to keep any and all emotion out of his voice. "Angel, you signed for it with your own name."

"Well yes, of course with my own name! Who else's name would I–"

"For a package, to my address, you signed your name on the receipt that the Delivery Man, as proof of task completion, will send along to…"

There was a moment of silence and Crowley waited for Aziraphale to finish the thought. Realization struck Aziraphale like a silent thunderbolt._"Hell,"_ he said blankly. "Hell is going to get a copy of the memo, and they're going to see that I– that you– in _your flat!–"_

It was too much. Filled to the brim with all the emotions a being could contain, with joy, bitter sweetness, relief, and so much more, Crowley broke down in a fit of laughter. It was that little bit of _scandal_ that Aziraphale had managed to lace in at the end, as though even he was himself shocked at the statues of their relationship. _Hell preserve me. Relationship._ The best part was that, while both Hell and Heaven surely knew about the angel and demon's shifting living arrangements, Aziraphale actually signing for Hell's attempted means of revenge and then sending it back with the Delivery Man was the most amazing and unintentional middle finger in the entire universe. Crowley couldn't stop laughing. It was too much. His ribs hurt. Tears were running down his face. And now Aziraphale was giggling. His cheeks were pink and he was burying his face in his hands. Crowley was having none of it. He was pulling Aziraphale's hands away from his face. Their faces intermingling with laughter. Their wings beating in time with the hiccups.

"Oh, they are going to be_ miserable_ when they realize how badly this backfired," Aziraphale gasped for air, gentling pressing a knuckle to the corner of his eyes.

"It couldn't have backfired harder if we'd planned it ourselves!" Crowley was giddy with laughter. So, Aziraphale knew who he was now. A humble demon who had fallen so much further than almost all the rest. Once an Archangel. And yet… Aziraphale was pulling him upward now, back on his feet. They were brushing themselves down. The angel was miracleing the broken pot fixed again while Crowley was rolling up his sleeves to try and salvage the half trampled, thoroughly traumatized plant.

Crowley was opening his mouth to yell at it that it should stop being such a drama queen and suck it up, when he felt the weight of Aziraphale's chest against his back. He had allowed his wings to fade back into the aether, but he could still feel them there, Aizraphale comfortably wedged between them. The angel then leaned in against Crowley and, oh so gently, brushing his lips against Crowley's ear, he whispered playfully, _"Love and reverence for all of God's creatures, great and small."_

Crowley blessed, even as he shivered against the touch. "Oh, you are never letting me live that down, are you?" He shrugged Aziraphale off more affectionately than intended as he made a great show of finding a flat surface on which to put the plant.

As he walked from the room, however, on his way to follow Aziraphale to the kitchen and the much needed bottle of whiskey, Crowley looked back at his Garden. Perhaps… Perhaps he would allow Aziraphale to coddle them. Just a little. His shoulders relaxed a little, the weight of his wings settling into place, the stars at last aligned against the back of the Archangel Raphael, Demon, the Serpent Anthony J. Crowley.

"Wait up, angel!" He called after Aziraphale, his Principality, Aid to Raphael.

**…**

**Let it be clear that, while it is Very Bad to open anyone else's mail, and Crowley and Aziraphale are early enough in their domestic bliss that this should absolutely give Aziraphale serious pause, these two will 100% become That Old Couple we all know who just have one email between the two of them.**

**Illustrations for this story can be found on my Tumblr, username: Waifines, hashtag: #Witness the Fall**

**Stunningly acted and rendered Podfic to this story by Anath_Tsurugi is available on Archive of Our Own.**


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